Blaglash.com

I did something very rudimentary and inconclusive, but I’m going to write about it anyway.  The claims that Hilary Clinton has made about media bias have intrigued me since she started making them, around when she lost Iowa and then won New Hampshire.  The problem is, there’s no way to prove who a candidate supports without peeping toming while they’re voting.

So I went to this website that tallies who’s donated to whom.

I CAN’T FIND A PICTURE OF HILARY WITH A NEWSPAPER! DOES SHE READ THE NEWS? 

I typed in “journalist” in the occupation field and tallied the results.  Most people who have donated to the campaign and listed their occupation as “journalist” have given money to democratic candidates.  That was my first immediate observation.  My next observation took some time and some tallies, but of  “journalists” who have contributed to democrats, twice as many have donated to Obama’s campaign than Clinton’s.  While that is no surprise considering the fact that Obama has been trumpeting his grassroots support and his many “small donors, just like you” it does pose some questions about journalism, and the biases that exist when someone sits downt o write about the democratic presidential nomination. 

Assuming that donating money to a campaign means you support it, it seems as though more journalists support Obama.  Do they voice that support in their writing?  Do these people even write about politics?  Is their slant prObama in their pieces?  Do they write editorials?

Whenever I looked up individual political journalists, I came up short- they hadn’t donated.  Does their lack of financial support lie in being untraceably biased towards their candidate in their writing?  Does it mean they don’t care about the campaign and don’t support anyone?  I doubt it.  Any one who is following this race closely has an opinion, and it is difficult to withold it. 

The washington post has an article on its website today, written by a Clinton operative, from the inside her campaign.  It’s pretty ridiculous.  How can a writer BE more biased towards his/her subject than being closely affiliated with it?  Allowing a Clinton operative to be published in a newpaper creates a disparity between who a journalist is  and their function.  Could Clinton herself have written this oped?  Do we trust Garin’s opinion?  DO we fundamentally DISTRUST him because of his proximity to Clinton’s campaign machine?  Personally, I don’t believe what he writes.  It is uncharitable for the post to publish this and expect their readers not to take it with a salt shaker.

However this issue belies my question:  is claiming a media bias in TODAY’S MEDIA possible, with the abundance of outlets, publications and websites?  Blogs create an open forum for anyone in to write anything!  They’re unregulated!  Hilz could start her own!  For every Drudge there’s FOXNEWS. 

Finding out who donates money to which campaign would take a long time and would only prove one thing:  everyone has an opinion.